Air India, IndiGo planes involved in near miss at Mumbai airport; air traffic controller suspended

Source: CNA

SINGAPORE: An air traffic controller has been suspended and an investigation is underway after two planes narrowly avoided a collision on a runway at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Indian media reported on Sunday (Jun 9).

In the incident on Saturday, an IndiGo flight landed on the runway as an Air India flight was taking off from it.

Footage of the incident circulating on social media shows how close the two jets came to each other, with the IndiGo plane touching down just seconds after the Air India aircraft lifts off.

According to flight tracking service Flightradar24, the two planes were 509m away from each other laterally at their closest point during the incident and were 511m apart when the Air India plane began to lift off.

The IndiGo jet touched down three seconds after this, Flightradar24 data showed.

The Indigo flight, 6E5053, arrived from Indore in the state of Madhya Pradesh, while the Air India flight, AI657, was bound for Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital of Kerala.

Both planes involved in the incident were Airbus A320neos.